Saturday, November 28, 2009

Memento Redux

As you can see from my last post, I'm on drugs, and have lots of time on my hand (my other one is in a sling). So I decided to get to one of my projects: editing a movie difficult to enjoy -- Memento. The funny thing is, Redbox was briefly offering it, so I rented it. The movie comprises a series of color scenes displayed in reverse chronological order, seperated by black and white scenes that are in forward chronological order, which provide background information in to the main character Leonard Shelby, an ex-insurance investigator who can no longer build new memories, as he attempts to find the murderer of his wife, which is the last thing he remembers. This cinematic presentation leaves the viewer feeling like Leonard does -- unable to form new memories, and therefore, unable to understand the story line.


04/06 Movie Trailer Project: Memento

Hoffman | MySpace Video


So, G-man has to save his sanity. Over the course of two days, I clipped out mpeg sections using avidemux. I had to set the frame rate to 24 fps, and change the sound to 2 channel stereo, using the lavc ac3 codec. I adjusted the audio skew for each clip, to ensure perfect synchronization. I then transcoded each mpeg clip using Mobile media converter (which uses an ffmpeg backend) to high quality avi. One clip in the beginning was flimed backwards (where Teddy gets shot in the head), so I used avidemux to seperate the audio from the video. I took the audio clip and converted it to wav format, then used Microsloth's sound recorder to reverse the playback. I filtered the video to reverse, then remuxed using avidemux, and coverted the merged clip to avi again. Then I appended each clip in chrono order, editing the transitions, and added the credits and title back. This melded into the completed movie.

If you would like to view it with me, come over and we can watch it over a bowl of popcorn. Or send me your email address in the comments, and I will work out an arrangement to satisfy the fair use provisions of the copyright law.

Best regards,

G-man